1. Field of Disclosure
The disclosure generally relates to the field of content publication, in particular to accessing frequently updated content over a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mobile computing devices, such as smart phones, are increasing in usage. As a result, more and more mobile computing device users (“mobile users”) use their mobile computing devices to browse web content. Mobile computing devices generally have smaller keyboards and displays than traditional computers. In addition, their mobility sometimes restricts network connectivity. These restrictions tend to hamper mobile web browsing user experience.
One approach to improve the mobile web browsing user experience is to utilize web feeds such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS, or RDF Site Summary or Rich Site Summary). A web feed is a data format used for providing a summary of contents on a website or a portion of the website. The two main web feed formats are RSS feed and Atom feed. Most major news websites and blogs support both web feeds formats. A user subscribes to a web feed, and thereafter receives summaries of updated content when updating takes place in the subscribed web feed. Typically, users use feed reader applications (also called aggregators) to subscribe to web feeds and view their content. Web feeds enables mobile users to keep up with their favorite websites in an automated manner that is easier than checking them manually.
Despite these advantages and ease of use, web feeds are not widely used, even by those regularly visiting websites that support web feeds. Currently, many web browsers place a web feed icon on the address bar to indicate to the user that the currently displayed web page supports web feeds. However, most viewers continue to ignore the indicators, and thus, do not utilize web feeds.
Hence, there is lacking, inter alia, a system and method for prompting users to subscribe to a web feed based on the web browsing activities of the users.